


Nests In His Hair

by aspermoth



Series: A Moment of Wonderful [1]
Category: Atop the Fourth Wall
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Emotional Abuse, Explicit Language, Gen, Verbal Abuse, Woobie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-26
Updated: 2011-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 05:05:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspermoth/pseuds/aspermoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We all know 90's Kid: irritating, over-eager, lover of Blüd Gunn, huge guns and Rob Liefeld. But maybe that's not the whole story. What's behind that pop-up ad persona?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nests In His Hair

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is running on a heck of a lot of fanon for 90's Kid. Most of that which I have used I invented for myself, but I would like to hold up my hands and say that the idea of 90's Kid having a crappy home life and an alcoholic mother wasn't mine. I can't remember who did it first, but it wasn't me. Having said that, I have embellished it with my own little details.
> 
> Also, this takes place somewhere around March 15th 2010.

_You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent their making a nest in your hair._

– Chinese proverb

  
*****   


90's Kid doesn't do much, if he's honest with himself. He just pretends to do things. As far as Mom knows, he's going out to school every day then spending his evenings working some kind of crappy Walmart cashier type job that barely pays a dime so he can spend all that money on booze or those crappy comic books or whatever it is that stupid kids like him spend their money on. He doesn't, though. He can't get a job. He's tried before, but nobody seems to want to hire a high school drop-out who wears the same terrible pair of shorts to every interview he's attended.

So he does nothing. Every day, he gets up early before Mom wakes, tiptoeing around so he won't disturb her and her constant burning-head aching-stomach technicolor-yawning hangover, washing and dressing and leaving before she even knows he's gone. Sometimes, she'll wake up and yell at him incoherently before dashing to the kitchen, strewing empties in her wake, and vomiting into the sink, gut-wrenching heaves that make 90's Kid feel sick himself. But that's not often. Most of the time, he doesn't see her at all.

He wanders around the city, mostly. Usually he'll hole himself up in a library somewhere and devour their graphic novel section, reading all and every comic book he can, hunting down Rob Liefeld books because every single one is full of tough bad-asses who'll shoot people if they deserve it and get away with it, even if they didn't have proper feet to run. He started getting unemployment benefits when he turned eighteen, but they don't add up to much and he mostly uses it on sandwiches and coffee at cafés and Starbucks stores, or at second-hand comic book shops.

Then, at about five o'clock, he walks back home again, sometimes with a dog-eared comic in a paper bag tucked under his arm, sometimes with nothing but his hands stuffed into his pockets and his gaze fixed to the asphalt. Mom is usually drinking again by this point – hair of the dog, she says, but it's normally way past that – and sometimes she ignores him and sometimes she throws her arms around him and hugs him and tells him that she loves him and sometimes she says terrible things to him, awful vicious painful things that stick to him like acidic slime and gnaw their way into his flesh and his bones.

When that happens, he locks himself into his room with his comics and tries to ignore her fists pounding on the door and her angry screams.

He never told her that he'd been kicked out of high school, and she never asked. They just went on like they always did, and it had become second nature. Get up, go out, pretend to go to school, come home again. She never asked about his day and he never offered information. It wasn't like she cared, like she was an attentive mother, like she was a "How was your day, honey?" kind of mom or something like that. It wasn't hard to keep her in the dark.

Today it's cold, unusually cold for March. And there's a wind blowing, a wind that cuts straight through his clothes and makes his skin prickle with gooseflesh. It's the kind of day when you'd wear a coat, if you had one, but 90's Kid doesn't, so it's a moot point. He tried to save up for a leather jacket once, a cool leather jacket, like all those people have in 90's comic books and movies, but Mom found the jelly jar he'd washed out and stuffed with notes underneath his bed and blew it all on bottles of five dollar wine while he was out and unaware. That was when he gave up trying to save money, and now he just suffers the cold. At least the snow has passed on, now.

Right now, though, he's safe and warm, sitting in a Starbucks right across town from the house where he lives – a house only, because it's not a home – with a steaming cup of hot chocolate nestled in the curve of his fingers and a new-old comic in the paper bag he has pinned between his legs. It's a comic he's been longing to get for months, and now he finally has his own copy: a rather crumpled but still very legible copy of Marvel Super-Heroes Special volume two number eight, the first appearance of Squirrel Girl.

It's his dirty little secret. An embarrassing crush that he just can't help indulging. There's just something about her, about how she can be so happy and so cute and yet so tough, how she can go through as much crap as anybody and still smile, how she can be the most ridiculous mutant in existence and still kick the ass of Doctor Doom.

Maybe if she could do it, he could too.

He'll never tell anybody about it, though. If Linkara finds out, he'll never, ever let 90's Kid forget about it. 90's Kid, the guy who worships Rob Liefeld as a god, the guy who thinks Gary Brodsky is a genius, the guy who collects Blüd Gunn with a fervour reserved for cultists, reading something as goofy, light-hearted and downright adorable as Squirrel Girl? Ugh. The idea of it.

He sips slowly at his drink, unwilling to empty the cup. To empty the cup means to leave, and to leave means to go back. Go back there. Back to that place that's covered in dust and filth, where the garbage hasn't been taken out in weeks, where the floors are almost a minefield of empty bottles and vile stains where Mom didn't get to a sink or a trash can or the bathroom in time. And back to Mom herself. Her drinking. Her swearing. Her sobbing.

But the clock on the wall says that it's nearly quarter past five, and it's an hour or more for him to walk. Mom might notice if he's late, and that might make her angry, and that makes it so much worse. Better to be on time and avoid unnecessary pain, even if being on time means hiding in his room with his comics on his knees and his hands over his ears, silently begging for Mom to stop and just go away. And maybe...

Maybe, if he's exactly on time – not a second too early, not a second too late – then things will be different. He'll get home and open the door and Mom will be standing there waiting for him. And today, she'll be clean and she'll be sober and she'll put her arms around him and hug him tight and she'll care and... and... things will be right again. Like they were in the 90's. Like they were when Dad was alive.

But only if he's exactly on time. If wishes come true. If hoping can make something happen.

Maybe. Please.

He has to be on time.

Lifting the cup to his mouth, 90's Kid drains it. He scalds his tongue in his haste, but he hardly feels it. Pain was something he didn't notice that much any more. It was the main reason he'd always kicked ass at dodgeball, when people bothered to pick him for their team. It didn't happen often, though. People like him – comic book nerds, kids trying too hard to be cool, kids just who don't fit in – didn't get picked for teams at school. They got picked for getting shoved into lockers in the hall and swirlies in the bathroom. 90's Kid didn't like school when he was there, but he has to admit, if he could go back, he'd do it in a heartbeat and do everything right and get his high school diploma and go to college like he'd always said he would. But he can't.

So instead, he's going to go back to that house.

He stands up and picks up the bag with his new comic book, nodding to his favourite barista Carl on his way out. Carl is always super nice to him, and slips him a cookie on the house whenever he can. Maybe it's because 90's Kid is there all the time or maybe it's because he's always wearing the same clothes and looking down at the mouth and spending all day in a Starbucks, but whatever the reason, it always makes him feel a warm fuzzy glow inside, like he's swallowed the sun. And that's the important thing.

The cold hits him like a slap in the face as soon as he opens the door. He winces and wraps his arms around his shoulders, pushing himself forwards, because the sooner he gets back, the sooner he can get warm. He pushes his sunglasses up his nose, aware – as he always is – that people are giving him odd looks for wearing sunglasses when it isn't even bright out. But 90's anti-heroes wear sunglasses, so he does too. That's just how the world works.

He walks as quickly as he can, feet pounding the sidewalk, the hairs on his arms and legs standing up with gooseflesh. Damn it's cold. It's been colder – much colder – cold enough for snow – but that still doesn't make this walk any better. But even the cold is driven straight out of his mind when he turns the corner and finds himself on the street where his old high school stands, with its big iron gates and its concrete path to the front door and the reception and the tiny winding stairs up to the principal's office.

He stops. He can't help it. Right by the gate, 90's Kid stops dead and stares. Things stay pretty much the same at this place: only the graffiti ever seems to change, painted over and daubed back on again and again and again. But there's one piece of graffiti that never changes, on the path right under the gate, carved right into the concrete: a very poorly drawn cartoon phallus, and underneath that, two letters, KB. His old initials.

Left as a warning, maybe. There had been time a-plenty to smooth it out.

Back then, back when he was at high school and his name was Kyle Baxter and he just wanted somebody – anybody – to like him and treat him like a human being, the popular kids had cornered him in the bathroom between classes.

"There's wet concrete outside, Bax-turd," they said. "Go draw something in it. We dare you."

"No way, man!"

"Do it, Bax-turd. Or you'll regret it."

So after he ate his lunch, he snuck out to the wet concrete and started to draw. It was rough underneath his fingertip, gritty under the nail, cold against his skin. He scrawled the biggest doodle penis he dared and then, as an afterthought, put his initials underneath. Then a shadow fell across him and he looked up and it was his math tutor Mr Jones who hated him for not understanding geometry and scowled at him while sweat slicked his bald head. 90's Kid swallowed hard.

"Yikes," he croaked.

"Come with me. Now."

He followed Mr Jones across the blacktop, into the building, through the reception and up the twisting stairs to the principal's office.

What happened in there is a blur to him now. It wasn't the first time he'd been up there, or the second, but it was the last. The next thing he knew, he was standing outside the school gates with a letter in his hand that said he can never come back. And he never has, until today.

The drawing in the concrete is still there. Maybe it'll always be there.

90's Kid blinks and gasps. How long has he been standing here? He has to get back. If he's late...

He turns and runs as fast as he can, even when the air scrapes at the back of his throat like razors and his lungs burn. He's about a block away from the street where he lives when it happens.

His foot catches on a loose slab in the sidewalk. He tries to catch himself, arms windmilling, but it's no use. His balance is gone and he lands on the sidewalk with a thud, comic book bag flying out of his hand. Biting down on his lip, pushing the pain out of his mind, 90's Kid scrambles back to his feet, grabbing his bag, throwing himself forwards, but he already knows that it's too late now. He's out of breath and in pain, too much to keep going.

90's Kid keeps on limping. He has to get back eventually, even if it takes him forever, even if his twisted ankle is throbbing, already swelling up, and his palms are stinging, the skin scraped back in thin white dead tags to reveal smarting pink flesh underneath, and his left knee is cut and bleeding. Too late. It's too late. He's not going to get home in time and Mom isn't going to come out and hug him and offer to put a band-aid on his knee and make everything better again. Things are never going to be better. Ever.

It's quarter past six when he opens the door. It's locked, in theory, but the frame is so warped that all he has to do is ram his shoulder against a particularly solid knot in the wood and it pops right open. Just as he thought, Mom isn't anywhere to be seen. 90's Kid limps into the kitchen, hoping she won't be there, and for once, somebody actually listens to him up there and the kitchen is deserted. He mops up his knee and sticks a piece of paper towel over the cut with sticky tape to work as a band-aid. He's hungry, but there's nothing in the fridge except bottles and he's not interested in that. Looks like he'll go without again tonight.

When he passes the living room, a flickering light catches his eye and he turns. Mom has a metal trashcan in the middle of the room and she's stuffing crumpled paper into the heart of a warm yellow-red fire. His heart leaps into his throat, but what harm can it do? It's in a trashcan. And if he says anything to her, she'll be angry and things... will happen. Bad things. Better to just leave it alone and pray she doesn't set the whole house on fire.

He limps onwards to his room, comic book bag in hand, and shuts the door behind him, jamming a chair under the handle so Mom can't get in. It's the only way he knows of to keep her out successfully. He sits down on the floor, wincing because his ankle hurts, and looks around. It's bare and plain, the only colour being the Liefeld pin-up posters he's tacked up on every wall, most of them full of tears and stuck back together with acres of tape from the times when Mom stumbled in and tore them down while yelling something about "that retarded comic book shit". There are piles of old Image comics on every surface. Mom never touches them. She says she hates the violence and the nudity and the swearing and it's "childish shit" anyway. And it's not like she ever cleans.

His Squirrel Girl books are another matter, though. They go in a safe place, the only safe place he has: under his bed. He leans down and peers under there, trying and failing to ignore the maudlin jelly jar, empty of money and bearing but a small crumpled note with "IOU $30" written on it in Mom's wobbly sobering-up handwriting. It gets easier to do when he realises that the books are gone.

Every single Squirrel Girl-featuring comic book he owns. Vanished.

Oh no.

Still holding the bag with his new comic in, 90's Kid jumps to his feet, hardly even notices the pain in his twisted ankle, tears the chair from the door and throws himself out in the hall.

"Mom!"

Barrelling into the living room, he dives at the trashcan full of burning paper and catches a glimpse of images, pictures, sequential art going up in flames. His comic books. Burning. He sticks his hands in and tries to pull them out, but they're beyond salvage and he only burns his fingers.

Mom laughs. Drunk again. When isn't she drunk?

"Kyle, you're a dumb little shit," she giggles. "Always moonin' over that Squirrel Girl bitch, ain't ya? Not any more, you're not."

He can't speak. His throat has closed up as securely as though there were hands wrapped around it. He's numb, too numb to move when Mom plucks the bag from his fingers and pitches it into the trash can with the others.

"I'll put up with your stupid violence and your dumbass swearin' and the fucking titties, but you're gonna have to grow up and face facts. The world ain't pretty because you want it to be, Kyle."

"You burnt my comics," 90's Kid croaks.

"Not all of 'em. You've got all those other ones," she replies mulishly, sticking out her lower lip.

Something snaps in 90's Kid's chest. He can feel it: the lump in his throat, the burning in his eyes, the twitching of his lower lip. Any second he's going to break and cry. And if he cries, Mom will laugh at him and he might do something he regrets. He backs out of the room, turns, and runs, ankle screaming with pain, no idea where he's going to go or what he's going to do.

He just runs.

It isn't the first time he's run away. He's crashed on cousin Linkara's couch before, but Linkara gets sick of him pretty quickly and throws him out and then he has to go back again only to find that Mom never missed him in the first place. And his subconscious traces the steps back to his cousin's place without him even thinking about it until he's there and his ankle gives out and he collapses onto the steps outside the apartment block, blood seeping through his make-shift band-aid and his chest tight and burning.

He could ring the bell. But what would he say? "Duuuuude, my mom just, like, totally burned half my comics and I am totally bummed! Can I stay with you?" Yeah right. Linkara would laugh him off. He probably isn't even in, anyway.

And it's that pathetic little thought that makes the tears come, slowly at first, then faster, running thick down his face. He curls up into a little ball, shivering and sobbing, and just lets himself cry until he can't cry any more.

And that's when Linkara comes around the corner. His hat is askew, he's laden down with sacks of groceries, and his face is red and shiny from the cold. 90's Kid barely glances up. He hurts and he's tired and he just wants to go home. Only he doesn't really have a home.

Linkara almost drops the shopping when he sees him sitting there.

"90's Kid?! What are you – are you okay?"

90's Kid shakes his head. He can't speak. Not without letting Linkara know he's been crying and he doesn't want to do that because dammit, Liefeld heroes don't cry and neither should he. He's eighteen, dammit. Eighteen-year-old boys don't cry.

Linkara sets the shopping down and sits next to him on the stairs. There's genuine concern in his eyes, a sort of glisten in them that you can't fake and it makes 90's Kid want to start crying again because nobody ever looks at him like that, not even Carl the kind barista who pities him.

"What happened?" he asks.

And 90's Kid tells him. Slowly. Painfully. Every single detail, everything he hadn't wanted to tell Linkara before. How after Dad died, Mom started drinking and stopped buying groceries. How he got kicked out of school. How nothing ever feels right any more. How he hopes and prays and wishes on stupid things that everything will fix itself only to screw it up by falling over and wreck it all. And how Mom burned his Squirrel Girl comics. And Linkara doesn't laugh and he doesn't seem to judge. He just sits there and listens while 90's Kid talks and when the words run dry, he puts his arm around 90's Kid's shoulders and gives him a hug like the brother he never had.

"Let me help," he says.

And wiping his nose on the back of his hand, 90's Kid nods.

He and Linkara struggle up to the apartment, fighting a combination of heavy groceries and the twisted ankle, and Linkara cleans up the cut on his leg and puts a proper band-aid on it and then sits him on the couch with a bag of frozen peas on the ankle that's swollen to twice its normal size before excusing himself and leaving 90's Kid there all alone with his thoughts, except that he's so tired from it all that he falls asleep there on the couch and doesn't wake until dawn the next morning.

He's stiff when he wakes, stiff in every part of his body, and the bag of peas is gone, presumably returned to the freezer. The pale light of dawn fills every corner of the room, gently illuminating, and curls across a plastic bag lying on the floor. 90's Kid leans down, wincing because it hurts, and picks the bag up.

Inside are comic books. Not old books. Brand new. Every single Squirrel Girl-featuring comic that he's ever seen in his life is settled in the plastic bag in his hands along with a single note in Linkara's hand-writing.

" _Dear 90's Kid,_

_You can stay with me for a few more days if you like. Doctor Linksano recently left the spare room and I've unhooked the gas canisters, so it should be fine for a little while. You can keep these in there so they'll be safe._

_– L_ "

And 90's Kid smiles, as wide as he's ever smiled before, because for once the world feels like it's right and nice things are happening to him. Then he limps into Linkara's spare room and loses himself in the Marvel universe with a nice young woman called Doreen who can talk to squirrels, because sometimes, that's a better place to be than the real world.

But only sometimes.


End file.
